echovar

There are many kinds of “time.” Sometimes we use the adjective real to describe time. As we talk about the Live Web and begin to imagine the possibilities of XMPP, a new set of online experiences come in to focus. Real time computing has come to mean very short system response times. But how short is short? Where are the borders of the real time experience? What are the human factors?

Jakob Nielsen is as good a place to start as any. In his book Usability Engineering, he discusses Robert B. Miller’s classic paper on Response Time in Man-Computer Conversational Transactions. Miller talks about three threshold levels of human attention.

• 0.1 second is about the limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting instantaneously, meaning that no special feedback is necessary except to display the result.
• 1.0 second is about the limit for the user’s flow of thought to stay uninterrupted, even though the user will notice the delay. Normally, no special feedback is necessary during delays of more than 0.1 but less than 1.0 second, but the user does lose the feeling of operating directly on the data.
• 10 seconds is about the limit for keeping the user’s attention focused on the dialogue. For longer delays, users will want to perform other tasks while waiting for the computer to finish, so they should be given feedback indicating when the computer expects to be done. Feedback during the delay is especially important if the response time is likely to be highly variable, since users will then not know what to expect.

The other rule of thumb is Akscyn’s Law:

• Hypertext systems should take about 1/4 second to move from one place to another. 
• If the delay is longer people may be distracted. 
• If the delay is much longer, people will stop using the system. 
• If the delay is much shorter, people may not realize that the display has changed. 

This puts the range of real time interaction between 1/10 and 1/4 of a second. This gives us some sense of the boundaries for the flow of a real time conversation through the network. The maxim that “faster is better” is supported in the laboratory. Experimental research by Hoxmeier and DiCesare on user satisfaction and system response time for web-based applications reported findings on the following hypotheses:

Satisfaction decreases as response time increases: Supported 

Dissatisfaction leads to discontinued use: Supported 

Ease of use decreases as satisfaction decreases: Supported 

Experienced users more tolerant of slower response times:  Not Supported 

But in the war against latency in system response has gone well beyond tenths of a second to thousandths of a second. The front lines of that battle are on Wall Street, or New Jersey to be more specific. Richard Martin of Information Week reports on data latency and trading in Wall Street & Technology.

Firms are turning to electronic trading, in part because a 1-millisecond advantage in trading applications can be worth millions of dollars a year to a major brokerage firm. That is why colocation — in which firms move the systems running their algorithms as close to the exchanges as possible — is so popular.

Wall Street isn’t stopping at milliseconds: “Five years ago we were talking seconds, now we’re into the milliseconds,” says BATS’ Cummings. “Five years from now we’ll probably be measuring latency in microseconds.”

If services like Twitter are going to scale up to become primary gesture/attention markets they’ll need to extend their real-time flow via an API to their partners. If they’re going to get that right, they’ll need to focus on delivering high volume, high quality data liquidity. The key question is under what terms that data will be available. The economics of real time stock exchange data is well established. Information asymmetry models assume that at least one party to a transaction has relevant information whereas the other(s) do not. Relevant information is a tradable advantage. Initially we just need enough speed to keep the conversation flow alive. But a live conversation is only the beginning of the creation of tangible value. The architecture of Wall Street’s trading systems provides us with a view into our future need for speed.

Real time is important only as it relates to future time. Real time data is the input into the Bayesian calculation of the probability of future outcomes. Predicting the future correctly is big business. To understand the meaning of the flow of time, perhaps it’s best to start with T.S. Eliot.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Burnt Norton by T.S. Eliot

I’m not certain how these things are connected. But watch the whole thing and I’m sure something will occur.

The dashboard formerly known as “computing” is always already mobile. It’s when we try to think about mobile computing as a separate category, potentially having something to do with “telephones,” that we make a fundamental error. All computers have always been mobile; granted, the speed and practicality of moving them has improved enormously. And, shrinking the form factor to size of a pocket has also helped– there’s little real difference between a computer and a teleputer.

And, what do we mean when we say “computer?” In its most common usage, it refers to an appliance in the home or office that is used for certain kinds of activities. And this matches up nicely with Doug Engelbart’s idea of computing as an augmentation of human capability. Computers are valuable to the extent people can use them in the course of their lives. They have no value in and of themselves. Even when they’re crunching numbers and calculating astounding Bayesian probabilities, they’re doing so with human purposes as their program. If we focus on Engelbart’s idea of augmentation we can see that the form of a “computer” is unimportant.

After spending a very short time with Apple’s new iPhone software (version 2.0), it’s clear that the iPhone is not a telephone. The name of the device is a bridging mechanism; it creates a familiarity that enables dispersion into the Network. The actual use of the device has now crossed over that bridge. Telephones transmit voice over far distances; they are single purpose and that’s the derivation of their name. Any analysis of usage patterns of the iPhone will show that voice transmission will be a shrinking percentage of overall engagement with the device. The iPhone is not limited to the augmentation of our capability to transmit voice over distance. The first release of the App Store has given us a preview of the many kinds of augmentation to which we can look forward.

As friction in the user interface is reduced, and mobility and connectivity is improved; the augmentation layer becomes more transparent. When our vision isn’t clouded by the cumbersome interface of primitive machines, we can look up and see what the Network connects us to.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. 
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, 
And human love will be seen at its height. 
Live in fragments no longer. 
Only connect…

–E.M. Forster, Howards End

Fingers communicating to other fingers without the knowledge of their owners… It’s the Dada of the Yada Yada.

Jon Udell talks about teaching civilians about syndication. This, of course, makes me think of Heraclitus. Udell would like his local school to stop posting calendars in PDF format and start using something like iCal, a format with a more formal structure. The idea is to write events that stream across a calendar– something that can be subscribed to, parsed, mixed and mashed up. The reason that it’s hard to change the way people think about data is that the stream is not part of the metaphor we put in front of our operating systems.

There is nothing permanent except change. 
                         – Heraclitus

“The file system is dead,” The guy who said that agrees with Jon Udell. His name is David Gelernter, and he’s one of the first people to talk about organizing data in terms of time rather than space. Lifestreams was something Gelernter talked about before there was Flickr, FaceBook, Twitter or FriendFeed. It’s simply a matter of changing the metaphor of the file system from a desk, file cabinets and a trashcan to something that more adequately fits the contours of our lives. In case you hadn’t noticed, we live our lives in both space and time.

What if instead of saving to a file or printing something out, we saved to a stream. What if that was acting within the normal metaphor for Human-Computer Interaction? We’ve come a long way with the graphic user interface metaphors developed by Doug Engelbart and the folks at Xerox Parc, but we’re in a period of transition. We’re moving from the solipsistic unNetworked desktop computer to the always already connected Network dashboard. We have an opportunity to expand the user interface metaphor we place between ourselves and the new internet operating system to include the concepts of time and the stream.

The other starting point for thinking about time-bound, documented objects in a stream is with Bruce Sterling’s idea of Spimes. He discusses the kind of design thinking that might go in to creating Spimes in his book Shaping Things. Boing Boing offers this summary:

A Spime is a location-aware, environment-aware, self-logging, self-documenting, uniquely identified object that flings off data about itself and its environment in great quantities. A universe of Spimes is an informational universe…

Sterling is speaking to the culture of industrial designers and the ecosystem of the manufactured object. But, of course, this doesn’t help with the problem of Jon Udell’s local school calendar.

Just as we’re always already part of the Network, all the marks we make are part of a stream. We keep the stream private and the make sections of it public when we choose to. It’s with Ward Cunningham’s idea of the Wiki that the document as a current public version begins to get purchase. Google Docs extends the metaphor to the typical office application suite. As Microsoft moves into the Network with Live Mesh, it has some opportunities to create foundational pieces of the new metaphor.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.
                          - Heraclitus

To understand the state of writing to the stream, all we need to do is look at what FriendFeed aggregates. To understand what the most common writing implements are, we can examine what makes up the flow that passes through FriendFeed. No doubt we’d find the usual suspects, Blogs via RSS, Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, YouTube, etc. Upcoming is the tool that writes events to the stream. Where, you may ask, is Microsoft’s Office in all this? While Outlook can export an iCal file, it is unable to publish it to a stream. It’s as though the program is unaware that it’s part of a Network and meant to serve humans who live their lives in a stream of space and time. The writing implements and storage metaphors of the new internet operating system must take the stream of time into the foundation of their UI metaphor. Once our tools understand and inhabit their proper ecosystem, Jon Udell’s local school will stop posting calendars as PDFs.

Of course, there is a psychological hurdle when it comes to incorporating time into our new tool set. It reminds us that we are mortals, and our time is not unlimited.

In remembrance of Larry Hamon’s passing, I thought I’d dig out my clown story. After all, we’re all bozos on this bus.

Back when I studied acting and directing at University, there was something we did called the clown nose exercise. Andrew Doe, the professor, introduced the exercise with great seriousness. Those of us in the Acting Studio didn’t know quite how to take this. Serious or kidding? The exercise is primarily used when rehearsing dramatic scenes. You play the scene straight, but you wear a clown nose.

Acting is, in some respects, a cry for attention. There’s the famous story about Olivier telling Dustin Hoffman the secret of great acting: “look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me…” That’s what the clown nose does, it focuses the “look at me.” It’s a direct raw exposure of the personal reason you’re standing on that stage. To play a scene straight, to really get the character, and let it shine through, your personal need for attention needs to be understood, controlled and you need to make peace with it. There’s no fooling yourself.

I decided to try an experiment, and I wore the clown nose for a full day, outside of the studio, in the real world. I tried to stay true to the spirit of the exercise and didn’t clown around. It was one of the most emotionally exhausting things I’ve ever done. It was like being on stage for hours and hours. The nose cried out for attention, even when I didn’t want it.

There are some who believe that we’ll be living our lives online– lifestreaming everything across multiple media types, including live video. I remember hearing Jason Calacanis talk about running a live web cam 24 hours a day in his office, and how eventually he had to turn it off. It made him feel anxious, self-conscious and short tempered. That’s the same effect evoked by the clown nose exercise, you’re always on stage.

The clown nose teaches you a respect for live performance as a deep and powerfully human art form. In this age of the Network, anyone can find or create a stage to stand on. As Clay Shirky notes, we publish everything and filter later. The cost of assembling a stage and an audience is as low as it’s ever been. The price of a true and good performance is exactly the same as it’s always been. 

There are some distinctions that need to be made when thinking about the creation of new modes of interaction on the Network. A number of metaphors are currently employed when talking about services like Twitter (Identi.ca imitation is the sincerest form of flattery). The judgement we seem to be trying to make is whether this new thing will go viral, or will gain broad market acceptance. When we answer questions about the new thing in this way, we’re pretending to be venture capitalists. What we’re asking is: will my investment pay off? And since we have no real skin in the game, we’re really asking, will Fred Wilson’s investment pay off for his investors? There’s an assumption at the base of the question about what’s really important. In a sense, it’s a moral position about what’s most valuable and a definition of the fundamental drivers of innovation. Thus the endless questions about “business model.”

After the money question, we’ll ask what most people will do. Will this new thing be adopted and become common practice? There are a number of binary oppositions we use as sledgehammers to beat the daylights out of any emerging form of life. These tools are a substitute for thought and discovery, they stand between us and what is unfolding before our eyes.

• Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants
• Young People vs. Old People
• Early Adopters vs. Most People
• The Enterprise vs. The Consumer
• Geeks vs. Jocks
• You vs. Your Grandmother

Tools for thought need to be put into question even as we employ them. When we thoughtlessly pick them up and use them as a hammer, we’re just repeating memes. The meme is speaking us and just asserting its evolutionary destiny as a selfish gene. When a meme is repeated to a group in conversation and all heads nod knowingly, no thought has taken place. Rather, this is an example as language as a virus.

So when does thinking begin as we continue our conversation on these new modes of the Network? It starts with a question and the deepening of the question. The Answer puts an end to the dialogue. Think of an answer like a software release; there’s alpha, beta, release candidates, golden masters — but in the end everything launches with bugs and has a version number assigned to it. The only way to move the ball down the field is to return to the question.

We’re starting to see the emergence of the Live Web from the established Static Web. The mistakes we make at this point give us important information about the future landscape. Twitter built a static web application using a content management system metaphor. But by opening pipes to the live web through SMS, XMPP and Track, Twitter enabled a compelling live web experience. Twitter’s ensuing stability problems have taught us that static web architecture can’t support live web usage at scale. The team there now has to start over with a live messaging architecture that can support the experience that was discovered. In this effort, Twitter’s simplicity is its friend. Oddly, the imitators don’t seem to have comprehended this lesson.

The interesting conversation around Twitter isn’t about whether it will make someone money or whether your grandmother will use it. Rather it’s the question about whether it’s a real foundational piece in bootstrapping the coming Live Web. Twitter’s Follow and Track relationship models have uncovered a much larger social space for real time interaction. Where the real-time web as IM is largely point-to-point, allowing two previously connected individuals to trade messages, Twitter enables a space where meeting someone new is a possibility. Our bootstrapping activity is only partially about technology, fundamentally it has to be about how we use the service right now and our ongoing conversation about its possibilities.